Hird, Evans briefed on drug

ESSENDON president David Evans and coach James Hird received a presentation on the peptide AOD-9604, which is mentioned in the Australian Crime Commission report on drugs and organised crime in sport, by the product's Melbourne-based patent holder last year, it can be revealed.

David Kenley, chief executive of Metabolic Pharmaceuticals, told Fairfax Media that Evans and Hird were addressed as potential investors in the company - whose peptide is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency - at a meeting in Melbourne before the beginning of last season.

Under the gun: Essendon president David Evans at a meeting with players' parents on Monday. Photo: Joe Armao

He said the presentation was aimed at enticing financial backing from the Essendon president's broking firm, Evans and Partners, in the pharmacological company's bid to have its peptide granted regulatory approval. Hird, the 1996 Brownlow medallist, has worked as a stockbroker and started as a director at the firm Gemba in 2006.

''We just gave a presentation about our corporate activities,'' Kenley said on Monday.

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Essendon are at the heart of the doping investigation engulfing both the AFL and the NRL since the ACC report was dropped with a thud last Thursday.

The club's former performance scientist Stephen Dank, who was sacked late last year, has been cast as the key figure in the supplements scandal and there is an expectation that Essendon players will be hit hardest by the affair despite maintaining their innocence.

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Kenley said he knows Dank but maintained the meeting with Evans and Hird, which was held months

before the sports scientist was marched from Windy Hill, was not about treating the club's players but purely concerned his company's quest for an investment partner.

Kenley said Evans and Hird had subsequently chosen not to assist. Evans did not return a call from Fairfax Media on Monday.

A subsidiary of Calzada Limited, Metabolic have spent more than $50 million since 1998 attempting to develop AOD-9604 as an anti-obesity treatment, which they claim is potentially useful for repairing muscle and cartilage in the recovery process of athletes.

It is sold prolifically around the world on the black market but to date has not yet undergone the scientific trialling to gain approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. ''We told the stockmarket, and it was reported in the press, back in 2010 that there was what we called at the time a black-market trade in AOD-9604,'' Kenley said.

''That it was being sold, at that time, principally by Chinese websites to particularly groups like bodybuilders for the reduction of abdominal body fat but also weight-loss clinics and even sports people.

Kenley said it was ''unusual'' that he was not contacted by Australian Crime Commission investigators and was disappointed in what he called inaccuracies with their descriptions of AOD-9604 in their report summation.

By contrast he said he was contacted by the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory in 2011 in regard to Australian Customs' seizing of AOD-9604 imported by unknown parties.